LONG before the emergence of Sputnik upon the educational scene, teacher-education institutions and the public schools were directing their energies to ways and means of identifying and developing human talent.Talent conservation and utilization, made -functional by appropriate curricular adaptations linked with educational and vocational guidance, are viewed by many as the essential operating procedures necessary for attainment of the American democratic ideal.Research on problems of talent utilization is being supported in several instances by the Co-operative Research Program of the United States Office of Education.The present report describes one such project, a longitudinal study which has come to be known as &dquo;The Human Talent Project.&dquo; The objectives, approaches followed in data collection, general nature of experimental treatments, or teleses, being employed, and some of the preliminary findings will be briefly described.
Objectives of the StudyThe University of Texas Human Talent Project was initiated in the fall of 1957, having as a primary objective the planning and testing of the effects of certain educational teleses, with particular attention to the interaction of the various abilities and personal and social characteristics possessed by boys and girls in the public schools.An educational telesis is defined as a planned, purposeful manipulation of experiences hypothesized to influence pupil change in a desired direction. Talent is defined as the ability of an individual to perform some significant and socially valued act. More immediate goals viewed as contributive to achievement of the over-all objective included: (1) determination of the variety and distribution of talent in selected samples of boys and girls attending junior high school, and (2) identification and analysis oaf relationships between certain antecedent pupil variables (e.g., family background, age-mate acceptance, role behaviors, etc.); present pupil aptitudes, abilities and personal characteristics; and changes brought about by specified educational teleses, or administrative and curricular modifications in the school program.The research also had two important, though perhaps obliquely related, action objectives, namely: (1) demonstration of the feasibility of a university and the public schools pooling their efforts in a co-operative research project; and (2) development of a program of university-campus and local work conferences for teachers, counselors, and administrators, designed to assist school personnel in acquiring fact-finding and factinterpreting skills and in devising suitable adaptations and guidance procedures which might lead to more effective development of talent in the schools.To secure base line data necessary for the evaluation of talent utilization and development over the three-year-project period, a battery of cognitive and affective tests were administered to approximately 1,600 seventhMr. Hindsman is executive officer of the Human Talent Research
